Free

I haven't featured TSLA in a while, but the promising pattern shown in the chart was too fetching to ignore. It suggests not only that a $106 rally lies just ahead, but that a short initiated when the stock is between the two targets, respectively at 1096.89 and 1106.46 will enjoy favorable odds. I'll provide a more detailed instruction at the appropriate time,  but the gist of it will be to buy put options priced at $1 or less with about two weeks left on them. Stay tuned to the Trading Room and this tout if you're interested. ______ UPDATE (Jul 1, 8:16 a.m. EDT): For what's it's worth, making money with call options when I forecast a 106-point rally ten days ago was MUCH harder than it sounds. If for instance you had bought July 3 1100 calls then for around $16, you'd be up a whopping when the stock was peaking yesterday at 1088. The short play remains viable nevertheless if and when the stock climbs into the specified range.  ______ UPDATE (Jul 1, 10:19 p.m.): Subscribers used the 1142.51 Hidden Pivot target shown in this chart to get short via the Sep 18 560/600/640 put butterfly spread. Variations on this strategy were reported, and different prices, but for your further guidance, I'll track four spreads @ 1.00. This price was anomalously low, but do-able nonetheless. It's possible the 600-strike puts shorted in this gambit were abnormally juicy because retail customers were buying them as a longshot bet.  Puts at the 700 strike were similarly overpriced. TSLA may get second wind a pop above D, but I doubt it will get very far. _______ UPDATE (Jul 2, 10:00 a.m.): Love those bearish butterflies!  When we put them on with the stock $90 lower than this morning's high, using an 1142 target,

The psychotic pre-dawn spasm shown in the chart did nothing to alter an unexciting picture. As I have have said here repeatedly, gold is not in a bull market, but a bullish one. The former produces relentless rallies, with occasional swoons that are quickly recouped.  Gold has done no such thing. It continues to mark time with little institutional support, unable to compete for attention with the Mother of All Short Squeeze Rallies. For now, we'll consider gold's prospects one day at a time. The slight breach of the 1725.80 midpoint support suggests bears will have an edge over the near term. Even so, if you are comfortable with rABC trades and their ability to limit risk significantly, bottom-fishing at p2=1714.10 looks like a potential winner. Any significant slippage below this threshold would open a path to D=1702.40.  Alternatively, if the futures unexpectedly move higher, a push past 1748.40 would imply more upside to at least 1762.40, a Hidden Pivot that could show some stopping power. ______ UPDATE (Jun 23, 9:15 EDT): In after-hours trading the futures have speared a 1790 target I posted in the chat room this afternoon. Traders who got short there should have covered half of it around 1786.40, since the pullback to that number is equal to three times what was risked at the 1791.80 top.  For now, I'd suggest a 1790.50 stop-loss for the remaining half, o-c-o with an order to cover another 25% of the position at 1785.80.   

Bulls showed no pluck on Wednesday, so we shouldn't be surprised if they let the reins go slack ahead of the weekend. Given the tempo of truly appalling news and the possibility that something horribly destabilizing could occur between Friday and Monday, a trader would have to be crazy to load up on stocks right now.  Should he therefore take the other side of bet? Thursday's price action should give us an answer. If the market meanders sideways, that would make put options look like a juicy bet. Since it is not Mr Market's habit of serving up juicy bets, what else might we look for? A sharp rally to spook bears would vex most traders, but there does not seem to be sufficient buying power to accomplish this right now. The third alternative, a nasty selloff, might be just the ticket, since it would have the paradoxical effect of scaring away shorts who have been whacked too many times by dip-buying maniacs. If there is in fact a sharp move lower over the next two days, and a short-covering rally to end each session, both of the rallies are likely to be opportune sales. ______ UPDATE (June 18, 7:47 p.m.):  No change in my outlook. The Smart Guys have done an incredible job this week holding stocks aloft for distribution even though there was nary a bullish buyer in sight. With a steady tide of short-covering from nervous-nellie bears weakened to exasperation by buy-the-dips droolers, the market’s institutional sponsors were able to preserve the illusion that investors have nothing to worry about. However, with the very stability of America’s governance under threat on a daily basis, a trader would have to be crazy to load up on stocks ahead of the weekend. They are an enticing short sale here

Wednesday's punk performance suggests bulls are ready for rest.  Even the obligatory short-squeeze dog-and-pony show on the opening failed to lift the futures to a modest midpoint pivot at 3164.88. A pop above it, however unlikely, would put the 3266.75 target shown in play. Otherwise, expect a breach of C=3063.00, then, probably, a weak rally after bulls have been stopped out.  It could provide an enticing opportunity to get short, so tune to the Trading Room discussion if you want to participate.

A gap-down opening Sunday night that was intended to exhaust sellers has left a crucial midpoint support at 2964 untouched. If it is decisively penetrated, that would put the 2851.50 target theoretically in play and also set up a 'mechanical' short on a rally back up to the green line.  Although the opening bar necessarily achieved its purpose, the shallow bounce so far suggests that a second wave of selling is coming. Any further analysis will have to wait until liquidity shows up at the opening bell. _______ UPDATE (June 15, 8:22 p.m. EDT): Some subscribers got in front of a speeding projectile today, shorting at the green line without a game plan. Check out my posts in the Trading Room between 12:19 and 12:56 for some helpful hints. I put out a wide range of recommendations suited to all levels of experience, but the ones intended for relative novices or those unfamiliar with the Hidden Pivot Method usually contain explicitly detailed instructions. In general, if the instructions do not tell you everything you (personally) need to know to do the trade, you should pass it up. There will always be another opportunity.  If a trade recommendation lacks such details, it is not an oversight; rather, it is because tactical clarity was not possible at the time the guidance was formulated. ______UPDATE (June 16, 10:27 p.m.) The rally stalled almost precisely at the 3158.25 midpoint pivot shown here. Given my bullish outlook for AAPL, however, we can expect buyers to surpass the resistance and climb to at least p2=3275.50, if not necessarily to D=3392.75.

Friday's afternoon's histrionics triggered a 'mechanical' short at 9721.50 that has left a 9338.25 target in play well below these levels. (Please note that the equivalent target for the September contract is 9327.50.] Although the futures got socked on the opening bar Sunday night, this was just the usual sleazy ploy to exhaust sellers, the better to run NQ back up their old wazoo.  If they return in droves for a second wave of selling before dawn, however, DaBoyz may need to take this vehicle down to the D target flagged above to set-up the next short-squeeze.  None of this will have much bearing on the very bullish target at 10571 billboarded here earlier.

Investment manias are nothing new on Wall Street, but this time the heavy betting is on the mania itself.  Speculating on volatility is the latest fad, and it is metastasizing so quickly that in just two short months wagers that the stock market will grow even crazier have become the actual cause of its craziness.  The bets mainly involve  derivatives, including options and ETFs that are tied to trillions of dollars worth of stock. Big guys, little guys and everyone in-between are supposedly immersed in this tail-risk crapshoot, and it is causing markets to spasm wildly not for bullish or bearish reasons, but rather, as implied above, because of the volatility bets themselves. Tail-risk mania’s fuse was lit in in January, when some canny institutional traders loaded up on then-cheap insurance against a market crash. This speculation proved to be timely, but it was more than just luck. They had access to good information that wasn’t available to most investors at the time. While some caught a faint whiff of Wuhan’s troubles back then, the stories were buried on inside pages, and few would have suspected that the threat of a pandemic would soon engulf the planet. The money managers, along with some muckety-mucks on Capitol Hill, were hearing the stories too, but with an urgent, well-informed emphasis on scary details that put the China crisis in play as a cheap speculation. A Covid-19 Epiphany The son of a friend saw it all coming in January because he got very sick himself after Chinese classmates returned to MIT following Christmas break. He nearly died, and the experience led him to warn his parents and grandfather to sell all of the stock in their portfolios. The hedge fund guys were on top of situations like this too, and its dire implications

Reporters and their editors have been getting whipped around by the stock market, since the market drives the news, not the other way around. That's why we were battered senseless with ridiculously optimistic headlines about the increasing likelihood of a v-shaped economic recovery. Although there is zero chance of this happening, the market's absurd rally for incomprehensible cyclical reasons  implied strongly otherwise. Lo, stocks fell hard for just one day on Thursday and the sunny stories on the front page vanished to make room for news about about a supposedly resurgent pandemic.  Recall that Wall Street had no trouble shrugging off this story when it surfaced statistically perhaps a week earlier; now the same story, with a few more deaths, inspires only fear. Every news outlet in the country that covers the stock market attributed Thursday's sharp drop to renewed Covid-19 fears. All of them were flat-out wrong. Stocks turned lower simply because the most important stock of all, Apple, hit an important Hidden Pivot rally target at 354.47 that had been disseminated to Rick's Picks subscribers a week earlier with the stock trading $30 lower. AAPL, the 800-pound gorilla of market bellwethers, was due for a downturn regardless of what the coronavirus was doing. The spin on news stories about deepening recession and the spread of Covid-19 will continue to reflect the stock market's cyclical ups and downs, which, more than the spread of the disease itself, determine the mood of headline writers and of America itself.

Bears had better not break out the bubbly yet, since Thursday's powerful selloff did not disturb the 10571 rally target first disseminated here two weeks ago. The key feature in the chart is the April 17 spike through the red line, a midpoint Hidden Pivot at 8600.00. Usually, when a clear midpoint resistance is so easily and decisively penetrated it means the D target with which it is associated is likely to be achieved. That doesn't mean the futures can't get pummeled all the way back down to p=8600 in the meantime, or even to x=7614, before they reverse and head for their fated rendezvous with 10,571. However, we would be 'mechanical' buyers at either level, based on the way buyers speared the midpoint pivot. Please note that the pattern shown in the chart, with A-B shifted downward to the 2016-2018 bull cycle, came within 0.7% of nailing the then-record high of 9763 achieved in mid-February. This suggests the pattern is a good one for predicting key turning points. ______ UPDATE (Jun 15, 8:35 p.m.): Short-covering psychotics are back in the driver's seat, headed most immediately to the 10341 target shown. Consider it a lock-up if the futures pop through p=9854 decisively or close above it for two consecutive days.  As for the bigger-picture target at 10571, as recent touts made clear there was never a reason to doubt it would be reached, least of all when stocks were freefalling last week. ______ UPDATE (Jun 17, 9:31 p.m.): With AAPL and the E-Mini S&Ps mildly in retreat Thursday night, and this vehicle unable to muster a push to an unchallenging 'secondary pivot' at 10,098, we should expect sellers to dominate into week's end. A moderate rally on the opening bell should be shorted, since it would imply DaBoyz are getting